Blizzard, in an attempt to stem the ebb of dwindling subscriber numbers in the US and Europe, has started a new marketing campaign: The Scroll of Resurrection. That works a bit like the invite-a-friend campaign, only that in this case you can invite friends *back*, after they have been inactive for at least 90 days. The invited friend gets a free 10-day trial, and if he resubscribes you get a free month. So I invited myself back into World of Warcraft.

Well, technically my wife invited me back. While my account has been cancelled since July, my wife was still playing on hers, very casually, weekends only. So now I used her account to send a scroll of resurrection to my account, and then got back in the game. I then resubscribed for 3 months, so I should get 30 free days on my wife's account as well as the 10 free days on my account. Good deal, seeing how it is me who pays for both accounts.

The plan is to advance to phase 5 of the player life-cycle: Recovery, by playing casual. More specifically I want to play my blood elf mage, currently level 11, to see first the rest of the blood elf content (Haven't visited Ghostlands yet), and then see whatever new content is available for level 20 to 60 in next weeks patch 2.3. I don't know yet how much I am going to play my two level 70 characters, priest and warrior. My old guild kicked me out, for which I don't blame them after 4 months of absence. And last night I checked what they were doing, and found that they had 29 players online, 25 of which were in Tempest Keep. I don't think I'd want to rejoin them, they look too hardcore for my casual recovery.
- posted by Tobold Stoutfoot @ 9:13 AM Permanent Link
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I think phase 5 don't necassary has to be playing casual. To me it simply ment getting on a new server, starting completely new. Getting to know new people, take your time while leveling, don't rush through them. Now I raid again, but only two days instead of three. And my new raid consists of medium to good players who are nice instead of very good players who only stayed together for the sake of loot and advancing.

I think its most important to have a look at what made you leave last time and avoid getting into this situation again. For me 3 days were too much and I hated the hire-and-fire-mentality of my old raid.

Thanks for re-linking to that Daedelus project article about player life cycle Tobold. I missed it first time around and it really is a terrific piece.

I wonder how cognisant game developers are of the "recovery stage"? It seems to me that a smart game designer would invest a lot of effort into content for this type of player - because these are people who could potentially hang around and pay subs for a long time.

I'm also doing the recovery by playing casual part, and it's quite amazing how different the game looks after playing "hardcoreish" for 2 years and then just going back and enjoying the game.

Another great reason for me to start playing casually again was ofcourse Wrath of the Lich King. 2.3 gives old players a GREAT chance of coming back and reroll for a new character and have plenty of time to make it to level 70 and get blue gear before Wrath comes out. It almost feels like it was calculated by their part (and I'm almost sure it is).

Anyways enjoy your stay in World of Warcraft again. Ghostlands is amazing.

The new belf starting area as well as ghostlands are nice to see, I rolled a belf pala who got all the way to level 14 before I abandoned him :)

However if you really want casual and fun leveling, roll a hunter, not a mage. I've leveled a mage and shadow priest to 70 and currently have a level 63 hunter. Hands down, the hunter was the easiest, fastest and most stress-free leveling experience of the three. Once you hit level 10 and get a pet and start to put talent points in the Beast Mastery tree, killing mobs and questing become so easy it's not even funny. Let's just say I regularly do 2-man group quests by myself, and my hunter was till recently (58) very badly equipped (greens only).

You will have a harder time however getting groups for instances and you would do well to join a guild as soon as you can.

I'm tempted to start WoW up again after a two month hiatus. I miss my Druid. Then I remember I have absolutely nothing left to do in WoW other than the raid/heroic content. I can only look forward to improving my gear and I can only do that by re-doing content I've already conquered or by doing something I learned to hate from pre-expansion WoW. Even with that it's a struggle not to install it again as there really is no other class I've played in other MMORPGs that play like my feral druid did.

I've decided to give EQ2 a try with the new expansion this week as an way to scratch my MMORPG itch. At least it's something new and it'll take me a really long time to burn through the content available after 4 expansions.

Interesting, pretty much how it worked for me (minus the scroll). Restart at lvl 1 to see the new starter zone. I actually got the draenei to 70.

I certainly want to check out the new content around 30ish with 2.3 as well.

Doing this showed what it's like to play behind the bulk of the population. There simply are certain things that you cannot do anymore or are very hard to get done. Questing in pairs is a great remedy because it allows you to at least do the small group content. But some stuff, like the ogrila dailies prequests are practically impossible to get done now on my server. Kind of paradox because these dailies are kind of casual content, but some of it is placed behind grouping that you can't do anymore with almost no player base left that cares about them.

Blizzard should start learning not to place certain content behind certain blocks, like placing the single-player ogrila dailies behind a slew of 5 man group quests that noone can repeat hence noone wants to do again. Luckily heroic access gets fixed with 2.3, because that has similar symptoms. It's very hard to do some of the rep grinds, even if one wanted to right now.

Still casual is good. I just leveled fishing/cooking on my Draenei some... there is plenty of time and why not.

Ghostlands is the best starting area as far as I'm concerned (well, to be pedantic, the Blood Elf starting area, including Ghostlands).Tranquillian reputation works well; if you do all the quests and kill the Scourge boss at the end of it all, you will hit Exalted.Not only that, but you have a feeling of having 'completed' Ghostlands.

The BE content is, IMO, done right: Definitely worth doing.But a word of warning - the opening of Zul'Aman in patch 2.3 may change the character of the Ghostlands quite a lot.And if you have trouble grouping for the Deatholme quests, I've done the "end boss" with as few as two target-level toons (20 warlock + 20 hunter), so you don't really have to have five. Actually, IMO, the challenge of just two or three in the group adds to the fun.

There have been a number of subtle changes to Azeroth in your absence, such as the addition of additional services to towns, flight points, tweaks to existing quests, and added graveyards (I only know Horde-side). Have fun exploring!

I've backed-off from the 70-endgame, since my wife and I have finished most of the Outland quests that just the two of us can do. I've never fully solved her crash-in-flight problem, and Outland makes it worse, so we've played in Azeroth a lot (I guess you could call it "classic-plus"?!) We pick quests we particularly enjoy, and specifically seek out content we missed or skipped the first time through. And I'm spending a good bit of time playing the AH on the side.But I ramble...